Project Gemini, a Russian semi-horror science fiction of an indeterminable but probably low budget, hit the DVD bins in the US in March 2022 and has probably since been degraded to the cutouts. The first feature-length genre fictional film of Russian genre director Serik Beyseu a.k.a. Seri Beiseu, who has since followed this project with two straight out horror movies — Succubus / Otrazhenie tmy (2024 / Russian trailer), which everyone confuses with R.J. Daniel Hanna's Succubus (2024 / trailer) but should not, and Whisper of the Witch / Zaklyate: Shyopot vedm (2024 / German trailer) — Project Gemini poses the question "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" but ultimately fails to answer that question and many more.
"People won't suffer... because there won't be any people."
David (Dimitri Frid)
Scriptwriters Natalya Lebedeva and Dmitriy Zhigalov serve up a tale that often feels like one of those save-the-world-by-going-into-space science fiction films from the '50s but with elements of TV's Lost in Space (1965-68) and/or its first movie version in 1998, as well as Alien (1979 / trailer), if not some of that film's cheaper imitations, like Creature (1985) and/or Forbidden World (1982).* Project Gemini is also oddly redolent with some queerly out-of-date sexism and misplaced romance... not to mention that ancient concept that a man's death is somehow less tragic if the woman keeps the baby.
* The texture of the
spaceship's wall padding definitely calls back the McD's Styrofoam to-go
food containers used to pad the corridors of Forbidden World, a far trashier and more entertaining and much less dour Roger Corman-produced exploiter.
If the CGI and some of the model work are good enough to look big budget, the rest of the model work and a lot of the sets as well as some of the costumes convey the feeling that the actors probably had to pay for their own lunch while on set. The spacesuits they wear on the mysterious planet, for example, actually include a black knitted beanie, and space travel on the bridge of the spaceship seriously calls to mind the way it is shown on the original Star Trek [1966-69 / original promo*] series, where the characters "hold on" while the camera does the Watusi. Arguably, Project Gemini would probably look better on a bigger TV than on one the size of ours, but a lot would also look a lot faker.
* For your enjoyment: Van McCoy's disco version of the Star Trek theme and Deodato's disco version of the Star Trek theme.
Beyseu and Lebedeva and Zhigalove present an Earth on which mankind, as will probably happen in real life, has finally destroyed the planet's resources, a disastrous situation augmented by the appearance of a virus that is steadily killing all the greenery of the world. But luckily, sometime earlier a mysterious orb and spaceship of alien origin, obviously on Earth for billions of years, was discovered. Both seem to be the true creator of life on Earth, as the orb's very function is to convert inhospitable planets into life-friendly ones — no Adam & Eve in this narrative. Scientists use the discovered technology to build a rocket ship and new orb, and an expedition is formed to travel to an appropriate exoplanet to terraform it for human life. (A crew which, much as in most science fiction films of your grandparents' day, is all male but for one female.) As to be expected, things go wrong and suddenly the team finds itself stranded at an unknown exoplanet with a dangerous mutated life form in their spaceship...
Trailer to
Project Gemini:
As long as Project Gemini follows the schema of a traditional 50s science fiction flick that most Boomers & Gen Xers grew up watching on local after-school TV programming, complete with its crew of generic faces that are hard to tell apart, it has an oddly retro vibe that makes it appealing, although it quickly becomes apparent that the movie is going to be saddled with unnecessary and uninteresting cisgender human relationship baggage. (Hot babes, the men leave behind, but mostly irrelevant to the story — other than the pregnant one, that is, but even her relevance is somewhat subservient.)
The movie does manage to pull the rug out from under viewer expectations twice, the first time the most successfully: much as in Psycho (1960 / trailer), the person you expect to be the hero of the movie unexpectedly exits the scene. (Adios, amigo.) Worse, his woman back home on Earth isn't pregnant — tragic.
The second time the rug gets pulled, well, we here at a wasted life did see it coming but it is actually rather an audacious doozy, one which brings up the chicken and the egg question and a dozen eventually unanswered questions. It also causes some crew members to become bad guys while others instead go the the noble sacrifice route. The latter includes the oddly unlikable and strident Steve (Egor Koreshkov), who is ultimately the true lead and hero of the narrative — and who also did leave a bun in his woman's oven.
Project Gemini is yet another movie that had the possibility of being really good but, in the end, never manages to move beyond tolerable, as is evident alone by the fact that its relatively short running time of an hour and 38 minutes feels way too long. (The movie definitely has a pacing problem.) The sappy flashback scenes are better suited for a Lifetime romance production, and the singular woman of the spaceship's crew, Leona (Martinez Lisa), may be a fit and lithe minority but is both barely a character and the only crew member that has an extended scene in their underwear (she favors sports gear).
As for Amy (Alyona Konstantine of Involution [2018 / trailer] and Black. White. Red. [2024 / trailer]), the only other woman of note to the tale, she is a bit of a shrew and baby-maker whose important and viable vaccine work gets mansplained away by Steve — though it and she prove essential late in the story. In turn, the monster-on-the-spaceship aspect sort of falls from the sky and, worse, is handled far too discretely. The whole monster storyline is so perfunctory and derivative that it truly screams for a far more exploitive, if not fully grindhouse, treatment, but in the end Project Gemini keeps its woolen knickers on and only offers one true money shot (a quick talon through a chest). Indeed, the crew spends more time fighting amongst themselves than they do fighting the tossed-in monster, which is definitely not good.
The dubbing, like the music, is perfectly acceptable, if sometimes flat.
Ultimately, Project Gemini is a perfectly adequate movie, particularly if you are not a demanding viewer or are stuck babysitting science-fiction-minded pre-teens, but it is hardly essential. Indeed, it is difficult to say that it is in any way special or truly has its own personality. Thus, if you have to pay for Project Gemini, make sure you get your screening copy either from the cutout bin or your local second-hand shop; we can't help but feel that the €1.50 we spent on our copy would've been better spent towards a beer.
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